Nautilus
by DreadNot
Summary: Summer heat oppresses Kirkwall, but under Darktown, things grow chilly. When refugees emerge from Darktown with stories of suspicious chokedamp deaths, Fenris and Anders separately investigate and find themselves in trouble together. Volutions 1.
1. Chapter 1

_This was written in response to an LJ kmeme prompt requesting Anders in Tevinter robes and Fenris reacting poorly. From that relatively cracky prompt arose 12k words of a plot. I took a few liberties with Darktown, dividing it into the Upperdark, Middledark, and Lowerdark and creating pseudo-neighborhoods in those areas called wards. _

* * *

><p>Summer had laid itself on Kirkwall like a wet wool blanket. Residents said the city had not seen heat like this since the Blessed Age. The air was so thick from moisture that sweat simply clung rather than cooled, and respite had not been had in weeks. Those who could, left the city for cooler climates, leaving Hightown a veritable ghost town, and the merchant quarter stood empty save for a few die-hards desperate to unload their stock. The wretches in Lowtown's slums hid in the shadows, fanning themselves and praying for the Maker's mercy from the swelter.<p>

Hawke had chosen to take Isabela, Merrill, and Aveline on a trip up to Sundermount to do a fool's favor for the little blood mage and to not coincidentally escape the blast furnace called Kirkwall. Varric was embroiled in a trade dispute with the Carta and was rarely seen without one angry dwarf or another at his side – or in his face. Grand Cleric Elthina had sent Sebastian to escort a small party of Chantry sisters and brothers to Ostwick. Presumably Anders was still working in his Darktown clinic.

With no one in Kirkwall to draw him out of his isolation, Fenris had taken to living almost full time in his mansion's cellars, where at least the damp carried a hint of subterranean chill. It did little to make him more sociable, left alone with Danarius' wine, the Book of Shartan, and an illustrated book of the alphabet that Hawke had gifted to him when he began his quest to help Fenris learn to read.

The alphabet book had wine stains, dirty fingerprints, creased pages, and had been pierced by a knife late one night when Fenris, deep in his cups, grew too angry to endure its taunting promises of literacy any longer. Despite that, it was still one of the elf's greatest treasures and he was determined to show Hawke his progress when the man returned from Sundermount with a new mad tale of near death.

After days of isolation, rarely venturing out of the cellars, Fenris was not certain whether it was day or night when a scrabbling noise jerked him out of a fitful sleep filled with dancing, taunting letters that flitted away every time he reached for them.

His hand was on his sword before he was fully aware that he was awake. He scanned the large chamber for some sign of movement in the dim light of one guttering lantern before he pushed himself up out of the nest of blankets and pillows he had made for himself. He padded silently deeper into the cellars.

He had searched the cellars when he first took possession of the mansion and found nothing of note other than the extensive wine collection, but in Kirkwall, it seemed that sometimes surprises came out of the very walls.

In this case, the surprise was the sound of voices on the other side of a wall that Fenris had been certain was solid stone.

_"—lock here. Just need to—"_

"Hurry—says the bird died!"

"Doing—Void, woman."

The words faded in and out, blocked by the wall and by the speakers' attempts to keep their voices down, but Fenris heard enough. The scrabbling on the other side of the now obviously false wall continued until, after a click, it started to swing out into the room where Fenris waited.

The man who had opened the lock found himself facing a sword longer than he was tall pointed straight at his face.

"Who sent you?" Fenris snarled before noting the people huddled behind him, a woman with a baby in her arms, two boys barely old enough to hope for the first wisps of facial hair, an old woman leaning against an even older man, all illuminated by one lantern held by a filthy little girl no older than seven.

"Please, serah," the man said, raising his hands to show himself unarmed. "We don't mean no harm. But the chokedamp took the Lowerdark ward below us. Me and my family only just made it out before it made it up to our ward. Everyone's dead, serah, and it's still spreading."

"Please," this from the woman holding the baby. "We'll just go through and out. Won't stay and trouble you, but the choke's still coming. Our sparrow died before we made it up the stairs to here."

The old woman held up a wicker cage to let Fenris see the tiny still figure lying in its bottom.

"And there's _things_in it," the younger of the boys hissed before the old man slapped the back of his head.

"Don't mind him," the old man rasped. "He was always a liar."

"Am not," the boy said sullenly, rubbing his head.

Fenris considered the pitiful refugees for a long moment, his sword not wavering an inch despite its great weight before he lowered its point and stood aside.

"Through that door. Stay there. Touch nothing."

He watched them closely as they filed past him with murmured thanks, searching each face for some sign that they were anything but what they claimed to be. The babe in arms would have been a good touch for an assassin to put him off his guard, but the elderly couple and children would be liabilities. Though you never could tell with boys that age; he was willing to bet they both had knives somewhere on them.

He took the little girl's lantern, though she tried to protest until her mother – he assumed it was her mother – shushed her.

The space on the other side of the false wall was barely more than a landing at the top of a long flight of stairs that spiraled down into darkness. Fenris descended far enough to see an open door at the bottom and narrowed his eyes at the thought that he had left this opening into his home all this time. Danarius could have sent assassins through it at any point and taken Fenris unawares.

He trotted down to the bottom of the stairs and closed the door, jamming his belt knife into the door jam to make it harder to force open. Later, perhaps, he would install a locking bar across it just in case he ever needed a back door exit of his own.

He heard murmurs from the family as he took the stairs three at a time to the cellar and pushed the false wall closed. Later he would secure that door as well, but first there were strangers in his home.

"Please, serah," the man, who seemed to be the family spokesman began, "If you'll just show us a way out, we won't never bother you again."

Fenris returned the lantern to the little girl and slung his sword over his shoulder in a practiced motion that made the two boys nudge each other and point. "First you will tell me what happened. Then I will show you the door."

The man moved in front of his family a step and ducked his head. "My name's Jameson, serah. My wife, Moira, the babe's Anna, my daughter Bess, my boys Wilf and Sam. Moira's mum and da, Luisa and Wilf."

"The First," the old man interjected. "Wilf the First. Not like the little lyin' bugger here, Wilf the Third," he said, cuffing the boy who had spoken of "things" in the chokedamp.

Wilf the Third shot his grandfather a look that eloquently spoke of how he wouldn't mind being Wilf the Only.

Fenris ignored the family byplay and pointedly did not offer his own name. "Just tell me what happened."

"We was sleeping, but Anna don't sleep so good yet, so Moira was up with her. She saw it first."

Moira held the baby a little closer to her chest. "It was the choke," she said. "You could _see_ it. Everyone said you couldn't see the choke, but it _glowed_where it was thick. I saw it in the Lowerdark ward below ours. We had a good place in the Middledark, had a view of the Lowerdark from our spot."

She said that almost defiantly. A good place in the Middledark wasn't even as good as a bad place in Lowtown, but people still clung to some sense that no matter how bad things were, someone else still had it worse.

"Just get to the point," Fenris said impatiently. Having these strangers in his home practically made his skin itch. He could feel their curious eyes tracing his tattoos and practically hear their inward judgments about the strange elf.

Moira frowned and shifted the babe to the other side of her chest. "There was the choke. It was kind of greenish, like fog, but I never seen a fog that had its own light. It turned the torch fires blue and I could hear people coughing down below. So I woke everyone up and we ran."

Wilf the First spoke up. "Choke ain't supposed to look like nothing. In all my time in Kirkwall, ain't no one said they _seen_the choke. They says the rock sweats it out when it gets hot. That's why we got the bird. Little thing'll die before we do."

Luisa shook the cage to make the limp little body loll pathetically in the bottom. "We didn't see the choke when it died. Might be on your stairs right now."

"I did not die," Fenris said. "Nor did I see anything stranger than a door to my cellar of which I had been unaware until now."

"About that," Jameson said apologetically. "We didn't mean nothing by coming up your stairs, but I found them a few years back. They went so high up I knew they had to go up to Hightown, so I never dared nothing. I didn't even tell anyone, but when we was running, it was the fastest way I knew to get us up."

He gave Fenris a pleading look. "I did it for my family. We wasn't going to steal nothing. We was just going to try to get out and find somewhere to wait until the choke was gone and we could go back."

Even faced with a foe that they could not fight and that might take their lives in the night, these people could not think of doing anything more with their lives than returning to the Middledark. Fenris regarded them impassively, seeing them as little more than slaves to their own lack of ambition.

"You," he shifted his attention to the younger Wilf. "What things did you see?"

"He didn't see—"

Fenris turned a sharp glare on Wilf the Elder and the man shut his mouth.

"What did you see in the chokedamp?" he asked again.

Wilf shook his head. "I don't know, serah. Shadows in the fog, but they wasn't people. They was…" He held his hands up, miming something taller than he was, arms held wide to indicate great size. "People-shaped. Not like spiders. I saw a giant spider once when Sam and me snuck into Lowerdark…"

"You did _what?"_Moira rounded on her son and raised her hand to strike him, but Fenris caught her wrist in an implacable grip. He held her until she relaxed her arm and then released her.

"Enough," he growled. "What you do to each other outside my home is your business, but I will see no more of this. Leave the boy alone."

He nodded to Wilf. "Go on."

The awe with which the boy regarded him after his intercession made Fenris uncomfortable.

"That's all, serah. The things in the fog. I don't know what they was doing, but they _wasn't_spiders and I don't think they was people. They didn't look like they was coughing, and everyone else down there was."

"Do any of you have anything else to add?" Fenris asked, sweeping the group with a glance.

"Serah?" It was the little girl, Bess. She cringed back against her brothers when Fenris looked at her.

He had absolutely no idea how to respond to that. "Yes?"

Sam nudged his sister. "Are you a spirit?"

Well, that wasn't useful.

"No," he said crisply before turning away. "Follow me."

He led the family up the stairs and out of the mansion. He knew they were staring at the open space cluttered with debris and the now long-decayed bodies of slain slavers, but on the bright side, fear made them all completely silent.

He caught Jameson's arm on the way out. "I will be blocking that door. Don't think to come that way again."

Jameson looked down at Fenris' bare, tattooed hand – he had not been wearing gauntlets while sleeping – and nodded.

"I've already forgot it exists," Jameson said before carefully, gingerly extricating himself from Fenris' hold and hurrying his family out into the pre-dawn light, away from the mad elf with the enormous sword, and away from Hightown before the city guard challenged them.

Fenris closed and locked the door before returning to the cellar to regard the false wall again while he turned the tale over in his mind – glowing fog, mysterious figures, dying birds, and people dying in the Lowerdark.

He retrieved his gauntlets from his nest of pillows and blankets before he ran back upstairs to fill his belt pouches with tiny vials, healing on one side, grenades on the other.

If nothing else, it was probably even cooler in the Lowerdark than it was in his cellar.


	2. Chapter 2

The first flood of refugees from the chokedamp in the Lowerdark hit Anders' clinic when he was deep in a nightmare of darkspawn. Compared to seeing himself as one of a monstrous horde all casting about for the song of a master, being wakened by pounding and shouting at the clinic doors was a blessing. He shook himself awake, hand already on his staff, adrenaline pulsing through him with the certainty that he was under attack from the darkspawn in his dream.

For all of two seconds, then the real world proved to be less pleasant than a dream of darkspawn by virtue of being real.

"Anders! _Anders!_ Open up!" The shouts continued, the pounding grew louder, and Anders stumbled his way to unbar the door, barefoot and pulling on his trousers on the way. Sleeping naked because of the heat had been a fine idea right up until the point when someone expected him to be awake and useful.

As soon as the door was unbarred, people shoved it open, pushing past Anders carrying others who could barely get their feet under themselves, or worse, the still figures of the most vulnerable – children and the elderly.

Everyone spoke at once, some shouting, some weeping, none calm. The victims who were conscious retched and moaned, their reddened eyes streaming fluid too thick to be tears.

It was as though Anders had woken from one nightmare directly into a new nightmare.

All he could do was start sorting through the chaos, helping those who could be helped and alleviating the pain of those who were too far gone for anything else. The worst was always when he had to tell a mother or father that their child had passed beyond the Veil, and it happened more than he wanted, as the children were the ones most gravely stricken.

The word that emerged from the cacophony of stories and cries was _chokedamp._

The problem was that Anders knew chokedamp, and this was not its result. Whole wards in Darktown died quietly of chokedamp. Sometimes it boiled up out of vents into Lowtown, taking entire slums down as stealthily as a thief in the night.

What it did not do was _this._ These survivors presented symptoms of some insidious poisoning. All he could do for their streaming eyes was wash them with water and clean cloths. He used up his entire supply of embrium for breathing, and elfroot for the retching and vomiting, and still needed more.

He sent out runners to call in the herbalists and non-magical healers who assisted him with any degree of regularity and sent another runner to Elegant to beg her help, promising, against his better judgment, that he would owe her a favor in return for her dipping into her supply of herbs and curatives.

Too few of those who had made it to his clinic survived. The ones who did filled every cot and space he had for patients. There was even a retching woman in his bed.

He spared himself a moment to wryly consider that she was the first woman to grace his bed in years. When she leaned over the edge and vomited on his coat, he could not help but think that yes, that was perfectly emblematic of his love life since Justice.

It took time to get things settled down, although Elegant's delivery came remarkably swiftly, with a note in her exquisite calligraphy warning him that he would owe her a "substantial" favor. Right. Of course. He would pay back her favor when she or one of her circle of friends contracted something unsavory and he healed it free of charge and more importantly, free of gossip. If Elegant wanted to cheat on her husband, he would at least spare the cuckolded man any diseases.

While he waited for her deliveries, he did his best to make his patients comfortable, and he started gathering stories. The survivors were from a Middledark ward situated just above a Lowerdark ward where all agreed there were no survivors.

That was not so unusual. A bad chokedamp outbreak could kill a whole ward with no warning.

The tales of green glowing fog, and a few frightened whispers that something had moved in the gas, were more than unusual.

The story from a frightened man named Georg who had left his decimated ward for business – he did not say what kind and Anders did not ask – and returned to see it flooded with radiant fog raised the mage's hackles the most.

"They was taking them," he confided after pulling Anders outside the clinic and out of earshot of the sobbing, puking, and coughing patients. "I saw it. They was taller than a Qunari with great black cloaks. They was dragging bodies down past the Lowerdark. Mark my words, when the poison clears, there ain't going to be a body to be found. They's all gone. All dead or worse." 

• • •

"I have to go to Lowerdark," Anders told Annalisa, the most skilled of his assistants. He winced at the mess that had been made of his usual coat – was that vomit in the pauldrons? – and dug into the chest where he kept his few personal possessions, pulling out a robe he had never really expected to wear again, but for sentimental reasons had never been able to bring himself to sell or give away.

He shook out the robe and ignored her hissed intake of breath. Void, he had already been walking around bare-chested and barefoot, treating all the patients with a _Tevinter Chantry amulet_ hanging out in the open on his chest, why not just complete the picture with the Tevinter mage robe?

So he would be associated with the heresy of the Black Divine and hunted down and executed. As though he wasn't already at risk of being hunted down and executed for being an apostate. Let alone the fact that he was an abomination. Try convincing a templar that, _Oh no, Messere Templar, I'm not the bad kind of abomination, I'm the good kind._ Funny how the word abomination precluded little niceties like explaining the difference between Fade spirits and demons.

At least the Tevinters didn't lock their mages away from their families and drive them mad with templar abuses. No matter what Fenris had to say about Tevinter, Anders could not help but think that they had at least a few things right. Less the whole rampant blood magic thing, but Kirkwall was no paragon of magely purity in that respect either, was it?

There was no privacy to be had anywhere in the clinic, not even in his usually private room, so he just turned his back on her and dropped trou. If Annalisa was looking at his bare backside, so be it.

"There might be more survivors down there," he explained as he pulled the robe over his head and settled the feathered pauldrons on his shoulders, deftly wrapping his bare arms in the cords that would keep the pauldrons from slipping and also channel the robe's magic to protect his arms almost as well as armor.

At least that was the idea, although he had a few werewolf scars from Blackmarsh to prove that it didn't always work perfectly.

He tucked the Tevinter Chantry amulet under the center strap on his chest, although that cat was pretty well out of the bag for anyone had seen him working on the sick and injured tonight. These were people who owed him, though, and they trusted the mage who healed them for just a bartered meal far more than they trusted the templars or Chantry.

"Annalisa, can you help…." he gestured to the laces at the back of his robe. Between the bare skin from just above his nipples to his shoulders and the virtual corseting of the torso, the Tevinter robe was… well, striking was one way to put it.

He had rather wondered at the Hero of Ferelden's choice to give him the robe as a gift. Admittedly the enchantments were useful for a Gray Warden, but he was certain he could have chosen a different set of robes to give to Anders. Too bad the man had been too busy pining over his Antivan assassin to want to start a fling with an errant apostate.

Lastly he settled the crossed belts over his hips and adjusted the pouches until he could load his meager supply of lyrium and healing potions into them. He hated that he kept the potions back from his patients, but _Hawke_ paid for them, not Anders, and Hawke had made him swear that he would use them only for himself.

_"You can't heal your patients if you're dead,"_ the man had argued when Anders had tried to refuse the potions and the promise. _"And I won't forgive you if you get yourself dead because some Darktown rogue doesn't want to let his broken arm heal the old-fashioned way." _

That was hardly fair. Anders would never waste a potion just for a broken arm, but sometimes he had patients whose pain made him almost hate Hawke for eliciting that promise, knowing as he did that Justice would not let the mage be forsworn.

Annalisa tried to protest as Anders cleaned sawdust and less savory things off his feet before pulling on his boots. "Anders, we need you here."

"You don't need me here. Everyone who could be helped has been helped. Those who could not…." Were for their families to take to the pyres.

"If anyone else comes in while I am away, you know what to do. Embrium if they cannot breathe, elfroot for the nausea and vomiting."

He gestured toward the woman in his bed. "And give her another dose of the elfroot if you would. My coat is never going to be the same."

He looked mournfully down at his beloved coat. It had endured darkspawn, giant spiders, countless bandits, slavers, and generally unsavory sorts, and might just have been done in by one Lowerdark-dweller's vomit.

"There is no justice," he muttered, only to feel a twist of disagreement from a corner of his mind that was both himself and not himself. "Just us," he amended for his rider's sake.


	3. Chapter 3

Anders' clinic had the enviable position of being near the highest part of the Upperdark, which meant that a bit of sunlight streamed into his ward's part of the former Tevinter mine. Most wards were not so fortunate. It took a dwarf to feel truly at home down there in Anders' opinion, which must be why the Carta had such a strong presence throughout Darktown.

He skirted the wards where the Carta held overt control – Varric's ongoing trade dispute might make the Carta problematic for a known associate of his – following the escapees' directions toward the Middledark ward most of them had fled. The directions were simple enough – out and down, right, left, right, left and down, right, right, etc.

The farther down into Darktown he went, leaving the Upperdark and memories of sunlight behind, the tighter the turns grew, the narrower and damper the halls. Anders had always hated the phosphorescent lichen that grew down in the Middledark and Lowerdark. It brought to mind unpleasant memories of the Deep Roads and broodmothers. Add in the robes he had not worn since he was a Gray Warden and the memories they stirred, and the mage was in a pensive mood by the time he finally wound his way down to the Middledark ward he was seeking.

The wards in the Middledark were more like collections of campsites than neighborhoods. Families or groups of friends or allies would claim a space, or sometimes if they were lucky, an alcove, in the former mine, and do what they could to make it a home. For the sake of keeping the air breathable, wards shared just a few cooking fires. Darktown dwellers had to rely on layers and layers of clothes to try to stay warm in the pervasive subterranean chill, even while Kirkwall sweltered above.

After being almost unbearably hot for weeks, Anders' arms and bare chest were prickled with gooseflesh. He rubbed his hands over his arms while he walked from campsite to campsite looking for survivors, the sick, or even bodies, in all cases finding none.

The air had a sharp bite to it that made his throat and eyes burn. The odor overrode Darktown's usual stink of unwashed bodies, cooking fires, makeshift privies, mold, and other filth with something that both as a mage and as a host to a spirit from beyond the Veil, Anders recognized as darkest magic.

For the first time in days he wished that Hawke was around. He liked and respected the man, but rarely was his first thought, "I wish Hawke were here." Perhaps because where Hawke went, trouble followed.

He wished Hawke were there. With Hawke and a couple of friends, they could face almost anything. As it was, Anders could think of no one in Kirkwall that he could turn to with any certainty of getting the kind of help he needed.

The reek that rode the air grew worse when he approached the stairs that would lead down into the Lowerdark ward that the refugees had agreed had been decimated by the strange gas.

Anders went back to a campsite and rummaged through the belongings scattered by its occupants' panicked flight. He briefly said a prayer directed to no deity in particular that they had escaped and had not been taken. He dropped a copper into the folds of a blanket and tore from it a strip of fabric. He poured some water from his canteen onto the cloth, wetting it before he wrapped it around his face to cover his mouth and nose.

It might help, it might not, but Anders was determined to investigate down the stairs before more time passed, and this was all the protection from lingering gas that he was going to get.

He leaned over the railing by the stairs that gave a view down into the Lowerdark, scanning the dimly-lit ward for signs of movement or life or the glowing fog, but he saw nothing other than abandoned belongings and guttering lanterns.

Staff in hand, he descended the stairs.

The Lowerdark housed no families. Anders took comfort in the fact that he was unlikely to find children's bodies in any of the campsites. However, as with the sites just up the stairs, he found no bodies at all.

He searched in a spiral that led deeper into the stricken ward, finding signs of struggle, of scuffles in the dirt, and once, a blood-soaked blanket, but not a single body.

His nerves sang with Justice's disquiet and with his own instincts' clamor that this wasn't a gang war or another disaster with Qunari _saar-qamek_ gas. Though the description of green, glowing fog had stirred a thread of concern about the Qunari formula, the symptoms were wrong, the context was wrong, and the Qunari gas had not left behind the residue of blatant _evil_ that he sensed here.

When he found the drag marks, his first thought was that something had decided humans were tasty and decided to stock its larder. His second thought was that he had spent far too long as a Gray Warden if that was his first thought. His third, and loudest thought was, _Maker, why do bad things always decide to go do horrible things deep in the ground?_ Because, of course, the drag marks led to a side tunnel that sloped drastically downward from the Lowerdark ward.

He was no dwarf, but the tunnel looked newly opened. The edges of the opening were still shedding loose stones and dirt when Anders reached up to run his fingers over the rough cuts.

"Maker help fools and mad mages," he muttered to himself before calling light to the end of his staff and starting down the steep slope.

The tunnel lacked even the usual glowing lichen that lined most of the walls of the Middledark and Lowerdark passages. As he walked, occasionally he saw scattered refuse – a shoe, a hat, and once he picked up and sniffed the contents of a bottle that turned out to hold some execrable liquor that even the Hanged Man would not try to sell.

How far below Kirkwall the tunnel led, Anders could not tell. He did not have a dwarf's stone sense. All he knew was that it was too bloody far, and it was a good thing he was not claustrophobic, because sometimes he thought he could hear the ceiling shifting and groaning overhead.

He did not hear the soft patter of bare feet on stone until Fenris was almost on top of him.

The elf's lyrium glow was unmistakable, giving Anders pause for long enough for Fenris to slam him against the tunnel wall. The blow was hard enough for his vision to white out for a moment.

_"Magister!" _

Fenris' snarl rang in Anders' ears for just a moment before his vision shifted from white to sheets of red agony radiating from his chest. He didn't have to look down to know that Fenris' hand was currently phased through skin, muscle, and bone to wrap his heart in a cruel grip.

His heart stuttered in Fenris' grasp before the elf released it enough to allow it to beat.

"I should have known magisters would be behind this," the elf growled.

"Fen-_ris!"_ Anders grated out past the agony that radiated out from his heart, turning his lungs to lead, shooting bolts of searing pain down his arms. His entire body had broken out in a cold sweat, making his hands slippery while he flailed for some purchase. _"Not_ a magister."

Fenris scoffed and shook him, making him scream, since his handhold just happened to be Anders' heart. He would die. He would die and it would all be because this elf was too bloody _stupid…._

Fenris was saying something, and the agony was receding, just fractionally. The hand was out of his chest, resting on the smooth, unbroken skin over his heart, the sharp claws at the fingertips of his gauntlets digging in to remind Anders that it would take only a thought to end everything Anders had ever worked to be or do.

He grunted when Fenris backhanded him with his other hand, the makeshift cloth mask keeping the sharp edges at the gauntlet's knuckles from ripping open his face.

Giddily, he thought that maybe a facial scar would make him look dashing.

Justice, was _not_ giddy.

**_"Enough!"_** The spirit blew past Anders' crumbled defenses to take control of their body, throwing Fenris back with a blast of raw Fade energy.

Dirt showered down on them, and Justice's shout echoed up and down the tunnel.

**_Enough!_** Enough! Enough… _enough…. _

He tore the strip of cloth off his face and leveled a finger at Fenris where he had landed, bracing himself against the wall with one hand. **"You will not—" **

Fenris' gaze had fallen to Anders' chest, his shock at Justice's manifestation and Anders' identity turning to shock of a different sort. In the struggles, Anders' Tevinter Chantry amulet had worked its way loose from the strap where Anders had tucked it in the clinic. Now it hung gleaming in the blue-white glow from the elf's tattoos and Justice's Fade light.

Justice's admonition was lost in Fenris' scream of fury. He threw himself at the mage, forgoing his weapon in favor of fists.

He caught Anders' jaw with a blow that made his head ring, and staggered him. He stayed upright only because of the wall at his back.

Fenris gave him no time to focus a spell, backhanding him again, this time raking across his jaw with the sharp plates on the gauntlet's knuckles. Blood welled up in the cuts immediately, painting the right side of Anders jaw and throat with blood that soaked into his robe's high collar.

"Where—" Fenris hit him again.

"Did—" Another blow, and Anders staggered.

"You—"

Before Fenris could follow up with another punch or backhand, Justice flung him back with another blast of raw Fade energy, following it immediately with a more focused spell, channeling telekinetic energy into a cage that he held, quivering with the urge to let it crush Fenris in the bars of force.

"It was a gift, you idiot," Anders hissed past Justice's focus. It was his voice, without the reverberant undertones of the Fade spirit, despite the way his skin still crackled with incandescent fissures. They were like a peek through the Veil into the Fade, and cast a light that strangely matched Fenris'. "From _Hawke!" _

"Liar!" Fenris lunged against the bars, drawing lines of blood in his own skin for his effort, although the drain of maintaining the cage against Fenris' lyrium-augmented strength staggered Anders.

He could not maintain the hold much longer before he would have to start cannibalizing his own life force for mana. It was either make the maddened elf see reason, or likely die.

"Hawke gave it to me, just like a friend in Amaranthine gave me the robe." He was talking fast and skipped the part of about the friend in Amaranthine being the Hero of Ferelden. Fenris would never believe that detail and then it would all be over in a bloody, heart-crushing rush. "I've got refugees from the gas in my clinic, one puked on my coat, and this is all I had. I'm here to find out what's happening!"

Fenris had stopped struggling and turned his head away from Anders.

"Are you listening to me?" Anders hissed, just to keep from shouting.

"Shut up," Fenris snapped. "And let me out."

Anders frowned and shook his head. "Not until you swear you aren't going to do that fisting thing again." He rubbed a hand over his chest. "That bloody well hurt!"

"Mage!" Fenris turned a fierce snarl on Anders. "Let me out now or we both die!"

Anders opened his mouth to say something, then snapped it closed and slowly, with a mounting sense of dread, cocked his head to listen.

Then he released Fenris from the force cage and fumbled for a lyrium vial from his belt, cursing under his breath.

From farther down the tunnel came the sound of running feet and rattling armor.


	4. Chapter 4

In the dim light cast by Fenris' tattoos and Anders' Fade-cracked skin, the first few corpses that moved up the tunnel at a shambling run almost looked as though they were still alive. Until the white gleam of bone through torn flesh caught the light, making Anders groan.

"Undead. Maker but I hate undead." He caught Fenris' arm before the elf could surge forward with his great sword. "We've a better chance if we work together."

The air around them both grew even colder, frost crystals painting mosaics up Fenris' blade before Anders thrust an arm out and swept it across the tunnel from right to left, leaving an arc of dagger-sharp ice in his wake to catch the first wave of undead and freeze them in place.

Fenris charged then, his great sword scything through the frozen corpses, shattering the ice as well as flesh and bone underneath indiscriminately.

Anders bared his teeth in a feral grin of challenge and shouted, "I'll show you why mages are feared!" at the walking dead that climbed over the remains of their cohorts to try to swarm the two men. He froze a corpse that flanked Fenris, allowing the elf to almost contemptuously shatter it with a blow from his sword pommel.

Fenris was hampered by the narrow tunnel, unable to use the whirlwind maneuver that would slash through enemies on every side. His tattoos flared with an actinic glare, and when the glare faded, so had the elf, looking as washed out as a painting left too long to bleach in the sun.

The attacking corpses had as much difficulty focusing on Fenris as Anders. Their strikes missed more often, and once Anders would have sworn that an arrow simply sailed directly through Fenris as though he was mere illusion.

For every creature that Fenris or Anders killed, two more joined their ranks, continuing to surge out of the depths of the tunnel despite their best efforts.

"Back," Fenris called. He had settled into that strange calm that Anders only ever saw from him when he was fighting. Anders saw him pull a grenade from his belt and hastily took several steps back.

He hated using those things, and not just because Tomwise charged an arm and a leg for them. Somehow it seemed almost insulting that non-mages could create something that almost perfectly replicated one of Anders' favorite spells – the fireball.

Fenris threw the grenade and Anders almost spitefully dropped a fireball directly on top of the tiny vial.

The concussion blew Fenris back into him, sending them both staggering before Anders caught himself and Fenris with him. His ears were ringing, but he bared his teeth in feral satisfaction to see that the tunnel had been cleared of onrushing undead.

Fenris shook his head and mouthed something Anders could not make out over the ringing in his ears, but the elf's gesture back down the tunnel coupled with his exaggeratedly mouthing _More coming_ got the point across more than adequately.

They needed to get out of there. The only good thing about this tunnel was that it kept them from being utterly overwhelmed by the creatures' greater numbers. If they made it up to the Darktown wards, the creatures might not follow them and they could come back better prepared.

Anders pulled a face and put a hand on Fenris' arm, ignoring the sudden fury of the elf's expression when he felt the surge of magic. At least Fenris' rage subsided when he realized that it was the kind of magic that closed the wounds that Fenris had barely felt in the heat of battle. He could have used that spell and that mana for himself, but the warrior _was_ taking the brunt of the damage.

For an instant, when one of the Fade cracks in his hand touched the lyrium in Fenris' skin, Justice did something in Anders' head that could be best translated into the physical realm as a _shudder._

Anders snatched his hand away and once again wished that Hawke was there, or the Warden Commander, or Void, just about anyone who would bring reinforcements.

He drew a deep breath and raised his staff, as ready for the next wave of attackers as he was going to get.

"After the next wave, I say we run," he suggested in a low mutter. Fenris grunted, which Anders fervently hoped meant he agreed.

They had the space of a handful of deep breaths before more undead clattered up the tunnel toward them. Once again, he swept out the arc of freezing magic, and once again Fenris shattered the frozen corpses with a great sweep of his sword. They were growing tired, but they could survive this.

Knowing that they were going to run, Anders played a little too fast and loose with his spells. He tossed fireballs to clear out the archers, he pulled deep on his reserves for more ice, he threw healing at Fenris as soon as he saw the elf look at all wounded, and when the rest of the world seemed to suddenly move into double-time around him while he moved as slowly as ever, he was not ready.

_Behind us,_ Justice hissed through his mind.

Turning, slowly, too slowly, Anders found himself face to face with grinning bones in a mage's hood and robe.

When a mage's corpse is possessed by a demon of pride, the arcane horror created is pitiless, merciless, and so very powerful.

Anders cried out despite himself, his surprise sounding hollow in his ears and overlaid with Justice's sudden rage to see one of his enemies in the flesh. _So to speak,_ Anders thought incongruously.

He opened his mouth to cast a spell, meaning to catch the horror in the same force cage he had used on Fenris a lifetime ago, when an armored figure barreled into him, bearing him to the ground, knocking his staff from his fingers, while the arcane horror stared down at him with its baleful red gaze.

Whatever had struck him was crushing the breath out of him. He flailed, his arm out, trying to snatch his staff back up, trying to see Fenris, and…

_Maker's breath…_

Anders had known arcane horrors and revenants to work together before, but the sight of three more revenants flanking Fenris was unprecedented. These were creatures created by pride demons – sometimes desire demons – possessing a non-mage's corpse. They were not known for their cooperative natures.

To see four revenants and an arcane horror all working together…

He had enough time to be terrified not just for himself, but for Kirkwall before the revenant slammed his head into the floor.

He saw stars.

He saw white.

He saw nothing. 

• • •

The first sign that he was not dead was the a red throbbing pulse behind his closed eyelids. Every time his heart beat, scarlet flared across the darkness.

The second sign that he was not dead was an almost pleasant weight against the front of his body. A little heavy, a little too knobby in places, but he'd had worse.

The third sign that he was not dead was realizing that the weight against the front of his body was Fenris. He could even feel the elf's hair tickling his chest where the Tevinter robe left it bare. This was not a sign that he would stay not-dead for long.

"Andraste's great gravity-defying bosom," he muttered and opened his eyes.

And saw nothing. He tried to reach to feel around him and jammed his elbows into something unyielding on either side with only inches to spare. Now his head hurt and his elbows were singing discordant songs of pain. And he was blind.

_"Shit!"_

"That wasn't as original as the first thing you said," Fenris' voice came in the darkness, too close, too loud. It made his head throb as though the elf had shouted instead of spoken in a low growl. "Were you saving that blasphemy for a special occasion?"

"Fenris, have I gone blind?"

The lyrium lines on the back of Fenris' neck lit right in Anders' face, making him squeeze his eyes closed with a moan of pain.

"Why are you on top of me?" he groaned.

"Because, mage, you and I are sharing a coffin," Fenris said, making no effort to conceal his bitterness.

"Then do that fisty thing you do and get us out!" He winced at the agony his own vehemence evoked and tried to summon enough magic to at least push the throbbing away enough to think. None came. Not a trickle, not a drop, not a trace of his magic. Nothing.

"Do you think I have not tried?"

Anders squinted his eyes open and tried to see the boundaries of their prison. They were far too close. Far, far, _far_ too close. His shoulders were bounded by stone within inches on either side and if his elbows were any indication, the space grew no wider lower down. Fenris had just as little space between the roof and his face.

"S'stone," he said.

"What?" Fenris craned his neck to look at Anders, making his whole body shift against Anders in a manner that forcibly reminded him of earlier ruminations on how long it had been since he had last had a bed partner.

Anders grabbed Fenris' hips to make him stop moving. "Don't. Just… don't do that."

Fenris went still. "What?" he repeated, impatience creeping into his voice.

After a deep breath – in through the nose, out through the mouth, there's a good boy – Anders managed to clear his head enough for coherence. "It's a sarcophagus, not a coffin. Coffin's aren't stone. But why in Flame is it tilted at this angle?"

"I don't know."

"How long have we been in here?"

"I don't know."

"How much more air do you think we have?"

Fenris had no response to that, but Anders could feel the tension in the elf's wiry frame.

So this was how it was going to end, not run through by a Qunari, captured by templars and executed, not barbecued by a dragon, not even with his Calling and a final trip into the Deep Roads. No, Anders was going to suffocate in a sarcophagus with an elf who hated him in every particular.

"Well, bollocks."

"What of your magic?"

Anders started to shake his head and quickly thought better of it. "Nothing."

"And your… spirit?"

He had not even thought of Justice. When was the last time that had happened? Anders turned his attention inward, finding the part of his soul where Justice had taken up residence with no difficulty, but the spirit was weaker than Anders had ever felt.

_What is wrong with us?_ he silently asked his passenger/other self/soulmate.

_I cannot touch the Fade. We are in some kind of trap, probably meant for demons. The taint lingers._

If it lingered, Anders' head still hurt too abominably to sense it himself, but he trusted Justice's word.

"We're cut off from the Fade in here. That's probably why I can't use magic. Justice thinks this may be a prison or trap for demons."

"Who would be fool enough to release a demon from such a prison?"

Anders hissed through his teeth at the question. "Merrill? I don't think she did it," he added quickly. "But if there's one fool blood mage in Kirkwall, there are a dozen. What's more important is how we get out of it."

"I cannot budge the lid, nor can I phase through it," Fenris said grimly. His next words sounded as though they tasted bad when he spat them out. "I had held out hope that the mage might have some way to free us."

"The _mage_ has little more than the worst headache in Thedas, and—" He had a flare of hope and fumbled at his waist only to find that his belts and pouches were no longer there. "—and nothing else," he finished disconsolately.

He closed his eyes and sighed, feeling his chest shift Fenris up and back down with his breath.

"I always thought I would die violently," he lamented softly.

"I could arrange it if you do not cease your complaining."

They lay in awkward silence for several minutes before Anders blurted, "I should have gone to the Pearl. Justice doesn't like when I do, but a man has needs. Now I'm going to die."

"I do not want to know of your needs," Fenris retorted.

"Then don't move around too much," Anders' eyes flew open as soon as the words left his mouth. He waited for Fenris to find a way to hurt him despite the close quarters.

"Do not even think of it," Fenris said, his voice even, but laced with venom.

"I can't help thinking of it, you're right there. Every other time I've had a man lying on top of me like this, sexy times ensued. I'd have to be dead not to—"

Fenris jabbed his elbow into Anders' ribs.

"Ow! Bastard."

"Do not think of me in that manner."

"I promise," Anders snapped, "that if I think in that manner, I will be picturing someone other than you."

Except now that it had become a _thing_ between them, Anders couldn't help but think of Fenris in that manner. It was better than thinking of death by suffocation. Long limbs, a strong body, his hair smelled of sweat and smoke, blood and wine, and—

"Maker, I told you not to move," Anders gasped when Fenris shifted to try to work the stiffness out of his legs.

"Mage," Fenris warned, murder in his voice.

"Warrior."

"What is that—"

"Against your backside?" Anders smiled wryly despite himself. "Have you heard of Gray Warden stamina?"

Fenris went completely still.

"Yes…."

"Then if you don't want me getting my stamina all over your arse, you'll stop moving."


	5. Chapter 5

Stuck in a stone coffin with an abomination, Fenris had many things on his mind, but foremost, and pressing into his backside, was a reminder that the mage obviously did not think like a sane individual.

"Perhaps," Fenris snarled, wielding words when he would rather have a blade, "you should dwell on other things, such as why we are alive."

He felt Anders draw a breath below him and thankfully, the words seemed to serve as a dash of cold water to the man's "Gray Warden stamina."

"I'd been trying to think of other things, actually," Anders said, sounding petulant to Fenris' ears.

"Clearly."

The mage sighed. "They probably want to torture us and turn us into abominations. Tarohne managed it with non-mages, so thank you, Fenris, you've taken care of that problem I was having."

"That little problem," Fenris could not help but snipe.

"Frederick is not little!" Anders protested.

"It doesn't— Frederick?"

Anders was quiet for several long breaths before saying, "I saw four revenants and an arcane horror. Were there more?"

"Wait," Fenris persisted. Did the mage actually call his penis "Frederick?" Honestly?

"No," Anders said firmly. "You're right. We have more important things to consider, like what we're going to do if they open this thing before we're dead. Other than scream a lot, because screaming is quite high on my list."

"That will be quite useful," Fenris observed. "Perhaps you can show them your stamina."

"Ha. Ha."

Fenris reminded himself that baiting the mage would not help him survive this to actually beat the mage at some future date. He pushed against the stone in front of his face, not really hopeful that it would open this time, but still feeling compelled to try. All it yielded was a grunt of protest from Anders when his efforts to push against the stone also pushed him back against the mage.

"Still wounded here," Anders hissed in his ear. "And I shall remind you that some of the wounds are your doing."

"Learn to live with the pain," Fenris told him. "Pain means you are still alive."

He traced the stone with the flat of his palm where his gauntlets left the skin bare. He had done this over and over since he had wakened in their tiny prison. At first he had only suspected that it was Anders he was on top of, but feeling around and putting his hands on the feathers at the man's shoulders had confirmed his identity.

He had not known that he could like the mage even less than he already did, but seeing him in traditional Tevinter robes had notched his dislike up to loathing. That, and the amulet, but the mage had said it was a gift from _Hawke,_which Fenris simply could not reconcile with what he knew of the man. Garrett Hawke might be many things, but he had never seemed to be a Tevinter sympathizer.

Which was also a line of thought that did nothing to get him out of this situation.

Anders was not the only one whose mind wandered away from the situation at hand as though afraid to think too long and see no hope. Fenris found himself shying away from dwelling too deeply on the fact that he was imprisoned with no way to get himself out. It made a ghost of the slave he had once been want to scream with rage and terror that he had done so much, fought so hard, and he was going to die a slave despite his best efforts.

He was a rat in a cage.

He was in a cage.

Cages had doors.

"If this is a cage for demons, should you not have access to your magic when it is opened? And I to the power from my tattoos?"

"You probably will," Anders said. "And even if I have no magical reserves to draw on, I can use some of my life force to power my magic, but that will probably kill…" He trailed off as thinking of something.

"Fenris…."

Fenris did not like the man's tone.

"Your tattoos are lyrium, right?"

"Yes, but—"

The lid suddenly opened, leaving both men blinking against the unexpected light. A heavily armored hand jerked Fenris out of the sarcophagus and slammed the lid shut, trapping Anders inside once again.

At first glance, Fenris saw that it was a revenant that had his arm in an iron grip. He thrashed, striking out with a gauntleted fist that glanced off the creature's helmet before his arm was seized by a second revenant. Still he fought, pulling with all his strength, drawing on the flare of power from the lyrium that came at his call now that he was no longer imprisoned.

He bucked and strained, even kicking off the ground with his efforts to free himself, but the revenants' strength was implacable and malevolence rolled off them in waves, sapping his strength until even the lyrium glow dimmed, leaving him still struggling, but so weakly that they could lift him onto a stone bier in the center of the room.

The other two revenants that had helped subdue him and Anders came to hold his legs down. The pure evil that the four creatures radiated left Fenris feeling as though his very heart would be too weak to beat soon, they would simply touch him to death.

The thought provoked another bout of struggling, weaker this time before he finally subsided and looked around for something, anything that he might turn to his advantage given half a chance.

The chamber where he lay was roughly circular, its walls rising and curving above him as though they were inside some great egg with the apex at least thirty feet above his head. His eyes caught on the silver tangles of runes that ran all the way to the ceiling before they twisted and swam before his eyes, making his gorge rise.

He tore his gaze away, searching lower, looking past the revenants to the swaying figures of newly-risen undead, still recognizable as the people they had once been. These were men and women in the ragtag garments of Darktown dwellers, their features bloated and distended from the gas that had killed them, their eyes glazed a milky white. They lined the walls, waiting with the endless patience of the mindless undead.

The horror floated up to hover by his feet, red eyes alight with something Fenris could only read as hatred.

When a warm hand brushed the hair off his forehead with a gentle touch, he startled and jerked his head away. He twisted to see what had touched him and looked up into a human woman's face. She smiled fondly down at him, her eyes a warm brown, her dark hair falling in wisps around her face where her bun had loosened. She looked to be in her middle years, but he was not always good at judging human ages.

"Fenris," she murmured, drawing out the sibilant in his name like a caress. "This really doesn't have to be so unpleasant."

"Try your wiles elsewhere, witch," Fenris spat. She had to be a mage of some sort to walk freely among these monstrosities. "I will not succumb."

She tutted and tapped his forehead lightly with her fingertips. "Such a prideful creature. How do you know that you have not already succumbed?"

His dark brows knit in confusion. How did he know that he had not already succumbed? Because he would still kill her and all of these creatures to gain his freedom.

He looked away from her, darting his eyes around the chamber for some other hint as to his prison, his captors, his probable fate.

There were other sarcophagi. He could not tell how many – more than a half dozen, probably more. At least four stood open, their lids gone, either broken or simply discarded. They gaped at him like eyeless sockets.

"Fenris." Again the tap on his forehead as though he was an errant child. "Pay attention or I might grow cross."

"Get on with it," he snarled. "Do your worst and have done with it. I will be no one's slave."

"Tch." She pursed her lips and studied him, idly carding her fingers through his hair as she did. "I suppose you have heard the promises of power great enough to win your freedom from the magisters you fear."

His eyes widened before they narrowed.

"What are you?"

She brushed her thumb over his cheekbone and tutted when he tried to twist and snap his teeth on it. "I am powerful and I will be more powerful with you as an ally."

"It will not happen," he promised her. "As you say, I have heard the promise, and I will not be taken by such tricks again."

She smiled and shrugged. "I do like to try it the easy way first. Screaming gives this body a headache after a while. I don't know how humans tolerate it."

He saw the flash of the blade an instant before she drove it into the front of his skull.

• • •

_Danarius was there, with Hadriana. He leaned in to murmur something in her ear and she smiled before stalking over to Fenris where he lay naked in chains._

He knew. He knew what that smile meant. He knew what Danarius wanted her to do.

He knew and he would do anything to make it…

No.

This is not real.

_Hawke was fighting some creature Fenris had never seen before. It was enormous, insectile, spitting gobbets of some burning liquid that bogged down the normally agile rogue. Aveline shouted at the creature, trying to draw its attention away while Isabela drove her daggers into one of its legs and Merrill desperately threw spells at it._

They were losing.

Fenris struggled to get to them, to help them. He knew it was happening right then.

No!

_The lyrium burned through his skin, down into his bone. He could feel it running through his marrow, setting his very existence afire._

He screamed again and again knowing that he would die, must die. No mortal flesh could contain this agony and survive.

I survived. Try again.

_"Kill them."_

The Fog Warriors had sheltered him, proud, unbending. They were good people.

The feel of their flesh under his blade made him weep, silently, as he killed every person who had dared to call a slave friend.

He drove his hand into the leader's chest and felt his heart pulse under his palm before he closed his hand into a fist.

Danarius patted him like a dog and he followed his master, not looking back, not looking forward, already knowing what awaited him—

I will not remember this!

But he did. He remembered all that and more, so much more. Memories, visions, dreams and endless, endless nightmares.

• • •

He was barely conscious when he was unceremoniously dumped back in the sarcophagus while the mage was dragged out to take his place on the stone bier.

But he knew that he was still his own man.


	6. Chapter 6

How long he lay in the sarcophagus nursing his pains, both physical and mental, Fenris could not say. No sound penetrated through the stone, leaving him to wonder if they tortured the mage as they had tortured him, or if they had simply chosen to end his life. After all, he was already hosting a creature inimical to their goals. Or perhaps the man had simply given in, as he had given in to the creature he claimed was merely a Fade spirit.

He wondered how long either of them could hold on before cracking, because he knew that eventually he would crack. It would take time – he was resilient from all he had endured with Danarius – but he also knew that ultimately, no man was an unassailable fortress.

Slowly, his resolve hardened once again. He would find a way free of this situation before he broke, and if he had to, and if he had the chance, he would kill Anders. Even Hawke would forgive him, given the circumstances.

He had fallen into a fitful doze when the lid was wrenched open again and Anders was dumped in on top of him. The lid slammed shut before he could push the mage's body aside and attempt to make his escape.

_"Shit,"_Anders slurred, face to face with Fenris in the pale light that gleamed from his tattoos at the mage's touch. "This is that afterlife of eternal torment thing, isn't it? I guess I should have believed in it earlier."

"That is a heresy," Fenris hissed. The Chantry taught that one spent eternity either at the Maker's side, or wandering Oblivion, forever banished from His sight. An eternity of torment was unnecessary embellishment. And, while he did not usually care enough to point those things out, the symbol of the Black Divine that Anders wore left him perhaps a bit oversensitive at that moment.

Anders just dropped his forehead to Fenris' chest with a grunt of fatigue and pain. "Fine. Heresy. Whatever."

Fenris lay there at a loss for what to do with his hands. If their last position had been too intimate, this was worse by far.

"What did they do to you?" he asked, to try to get his thoughts back on track.

"Mmpf," Anders mumbled against the leather. "You know, threats, bargains for power and freedom, torture. The usual demonic shit." His words were growing progressively more slurred, his body lying almost totally slack against Fenris.

Fenris jammed his rigid fingers into Anders side to bring the mage's attention back from the brink of passing out. "What. Else?" he demanded, biting off the words.

Anders yelped and tried to swat Fenris' hand away, but he did sound more awake. "Did I mention you were a bastard?"

He rubbed a hand over his forehead and took a deep breath while he collected his thoughts. "Four revenants, one arcane horror, one crazy bitch possessed by a demon of pride, one Lowerdark ward's worth of walking dead, one prison chamber, and oh, yes, she stabbed me in the face. Did she stab you in the face? I hope she stabbed you in the face, because I'd hate to be the only one."

At mention of stabbing, Fenris had to restrain himself from touching his own forehead.

"You don't have a mark on your face," he observed. Well, other than the marks from where Fenris had hit him, but they were not pertinent in Fenris' opinion.

"And I don't have a mark on my chest where you stuck your hand into it either," Anders retorted. "I guess you have your magical fisting thing and she has a magical knifing thing. When they open the lid again, I'll just leave you two to chat about the niceties on that, shall I?"

Fenris clenched his jaw and restrained himself from doing a non-magical fisting thing to the man. There wasn't room in their stone prison for a good punch anyway.

"Why are they giving us both time to rest?" he asked instead.

Anders groaned. "Because that was just foreplay. She was painting something on the floor when they dragged me off that table of torture. I'm not up on my blood magic, skipped all the seminars and extra-curriculars at the Circle you know, but I'm guessing it wasn't a 'let's go skipping hand in hand through the meadows' spell."

Fenris frowned, remembering that he had been so weak from the visions that had tortured him that he was barely conscious when he was returned to the sarcophagus. How was it that the mage, definitely the physically weaker of the two of them, was even carrying on a coherent conversation already?

"You saw her painting something on the floor?"

"Yes," Anders said. "Well, not me, exactly. Justice. He got a good look around while I was busy reliving some of my least favorite parts of my life, if you must know. Why can't demons ever be interested in a cup of tea and a nice chat? But no, it's straight to the stabbity and the possession and being generally demon-y."

"Mage," Fenris growled.

"We did this already," Anders groaned. "Warrior."

"Did your _spirit,"_he spat the word out, "learn anything useful?"

"Just ask him why don't you?" Anders said. "Maybe I can take a nap and you two can chat." He sighed again and tried to find a slightly less… cuddly position against Fenris, then tilted his head as though listening to someone speak.

"He did see something." He let out a low whistle. "Maker, he isn't going to like that idea."

"Who isn't?"

Anders squeezed his eyes closed in a grimace. "You aren't. You aren't going to like this one bit."

"Speak."

Weakly, Anders said, "Arf."

Then he leaned up enough to look Fenris in the eye. In other circumstances they would have been close enough to kiss.

"Did you see the runes all over the walls?" he asked.

"Yes…?"

"They're lyrium. You don't even want to know what all that lyrium does to my head, but that's not the point. Did you notice that one of them, by the door, had been defaced?"

"I was rather preoccupied," Fenris said dryly, although he was also silently questioning Anders' comment about the lyrium's effects.

"Me too, actually," Anders said as though to commiserate. "But Justice saw it. The metal was dug out of part of the rune. We think if it could be repaired, the whole room would go back to being the proper demon trap it's obviously built to be."

"Because these sarcophagi aren't sufficient?" Fenris asked.

Anders was very serious, a shade of the old Gray Warden in his reply. "With demons, obviously not."

He shook his head and went on. "My best guess is that Milady Stabbity is a mage who found her way down here. Maybe one of Tarohne's coven seeking more power. They'd be stupid enough to let demons out. If she vandalized the rune and opened a sarcophagus, then we would have the start of this entire bloody mess."

"It makes sense," Fenris conceded. "But it has no bearing on the fact that we have no means or time to repair the rune. They are not going to idly stand by while we find the piece that is missing. Nor does it explain what I am not going to like."

"You aren't going to like two things," Anders said. "And I'm really not certain which one you're going to hate more, but I'm going to have to ask you not to kill me when I make this proposition, because I'm honestly _desperate_ here."

"Spit it out."

"We have the lyrium right here," Anders said cautiously. "And it… er… well, goes with the idea I was going to mention before we were so rudely interrupted for one-on-one time with monsters."

Fenris had gone completely still, feeling a cold rage start to well up inside himself, but he clamped down on the anger and sounded utterly calm when he said, "Go on."

Anders spat the rest out in a rush. "I think I can pull some mana out of your tattoos. Or Justice can, I mean. Either way, when they open the lid, I can hit them with a spell, you can distract them, and I'll run over to fit the piece into the rune. Then we run like our arses are on fire."

"The piece," Fenris repeated in a low, dangerous rumble. "You mean the piece of lyrium you expect to somehow get from my flesh."

Anders swallowed audibly. "Yes…?"

"You are mad."

"And…?"

Fenris thought he might be just as mad for even entertaining the thought. "Have you no other ideas?"

"Maker, but I wish I did," Anders said fervently. "And I hate to be pushy about the whole gouging out a chunk of your flesh and siphoning mana out of you thing, but my back is simply itching thinking about the lid opening any time."

"How do you propose we get this piece out?"

At that Anders gave him a crooked smile that did little to conceal the fear in his eyes. "That gauntlet of yours has to be good for more than just ruining my pretty face."

• • •

The less said of the process of gouging a piece of lyrium out of Fenris' hip in the close confines of their prison, the better. The mage honestly seemed to take no pleasure in the act, and both men were shaking with the strain by the time he declared the piece of sufficient size to fill the damaged rune.

The entire process was made worse by the fear that at any moment the lid would crash open and they would be discovered before they could act.

When it was done, Anders held a piece of Fenris' lyrium in his hand and strangely, when the mage pressed a kiss to Fenris' jaw, he did not have it in him to offer even a growl of complaint. Unlike the joking arousal of earlier, it was meant only as a companion's comfort, and Fenris surprised himself by accepting it as such. Certainly Anders seemed surprised both that he had done it, and that Fenris did not hurt him for doing so.

They would _never_ speak of it again.

"The moment the lid opens, I am going to draw mana from you," Anders warned. "Don't waste time. I'll distract them and it will either be do or die. Either way, neither of us is going on that table again."

Fenris cleared his throat of barely-suppressed screams. "I should be on top."

"That's what I always thought," Anders said, then hurried to add, "I mean in here. Right. You on top to burst out doing that fighting thing while I throw a spell or two and scarper."

Getting Fenris on top was easier said than done in a space that barely contained the two of them as it was. With much contortion, swearing, and grunts of pain from both of them, eventually they were back in the position they had first found themselves in. Anders put a hand lightly on Fenris' arm where the tattoos were bared to be ready to draw mana from him as soon as the lid rose.

Then they waited. Anders tried to engage him in conversation, but each time he tried, Fenris only grunted in reply until the mage's flow of words petered out entirely.

"Fenris?"

He grunted.

"If…" Anders cleared his throat. "…just if anything goes strange, I won't hold it against you if you leave me here."

This roused Fenris from his contemplation of the lid enough to ask, "What do you mean 'if anything goes strange'?"

"Just anything," Anders repeated. "You never can tell with mad plans, right?"

This time nothing more Fenris could say would rouse him from his silence. Fenris observed that from the other side of things, doing that it was rather annoying.

• • •

It felt like something slightly longer than an eternity later when the lid was lifted from the sarcophagus. Anders' hand tightened on Fenris' arm for a bare instant, but he felt the shock of the magical pull throughout his body, painting lighting through every inch that the tattoos touched, except the strange empty space where they had cut away a piece of the marking.

"Go!" Anders hissed, his skin crackling with Justice's power, Fade light painting the revenant in front of them with Fenris' silhouette.

He exploded from the sarcophagus, ignoring the pain in his hip, hearing Anders shout the words of a spell that made the room behind the revenant explode with flame that was aimed so expertly that he felt the wash of heat on his skin, but was untouched when the revenant was not.

He bore the armored creature backward, clearing space for Anders to scramble out of the sarcophagus.

Behind him, the mage threw out another arc of ice and ran. From the corner of his eye, Fenris could see him fumbling at the wall by the door, but the revenants were converging on him, and a blue radiance had descended on the room from some spell the arcane horror had cast. He could hear the possessed mage's voice raised to shout commands to the undead. The world had exploded into noise and action in which Fenris fought like a mad thing to keep the revenants from touching him even as their malevolent auras and the blue light spell sapped away his strength one measure at a time.

He ducked a charge from the nearest revenant and raised his arm to block a swing from the next when the swing stopped in mid-air.

Everything stopped. The shouting, the creak of armor, the sound of the mage shouting not to kill them yet.

The only sound was his own harsh breathing.

Around him, the runes glowed with a soft warmth. "It worked," he said, looking at the frozen scene in awe. "It worked!"

He looked around and saw his sword and Anders' staff propped against one of the sarcophagi and retrieved them, threading his way through the revenants and past the mage, who stood with her face contorted in rage, her mouth open.

"If I kill her, will I be releasing the demon?" he asked, turning to look at Anders where he stood by the door.

Anders did not respond.

"Mage?"

He crossed to lay a hand on the man's shoulder and found him as stiffly frozen as all the other unnatural creatures in the room, his hand still pressing the bloodied bit of lyrium from Fenris' hip into the rune.

It struck him then what Anders had meant when he had said "if anything goes strange."

"Fool mage," he growled at the man. "It would serve you right if I took you at your word."

It took time to shove the revenants into sarcophagi and lever the lids into place before turning to the relatively easier work of imprisoning the arcane horror and the woman whose name he had never learned. His skin crawled at having to touch these creatures that even immobile, reeked of evil.

From there it was simple cleanup to decapitate the frozen undead – distasteful cleanup, but simple. Once the room was cleared of obvious dangers, he moved Anders' hand enough to pull the piece of lyrium from the rune.

Anders jerked back into motion and shouted, "Run!" before looking around the room.

Fenris took no small pleasure in seeing the man's jaw drop.

He stuck Anders' staff in his unresisting hand and pushed him out into the tunnel before replacing the bit of lyrium and following him.

"Let's go find Varric, shall we? I'd say we'll need his contacts to get dwarven help to fill these tunnels before more fools come down here." Anders made a show of straightening his robe and tucking away his Chantry amulet before nodding to himself. "And then I might even buy you a cold drink at the Hanged Man."

"No might, mage," Fenris growled, already striding up the tunnel despite the ache in his hip. "You will."


End file.
